


Revenant

by MajaLi



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Mild Gore, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-05 14:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajaLi/pseuds/MajaLi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breath and blood are not the only engines that drive the lives of men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jehan is the first to rise. He wakes screaming, clawing at the earth above him and then at the earth in his throat; he is in hell, or so he thinks. There are throbbing, stabbing pains in his chest, worse in his left shoulder and under his left collarbone than in the rest. He chokes – turns his head and coughs – chokes again. But his hands move on their own, dragging him upward through what proves to be a shallow covering of soil until his head clears the surface and he can retch out the black-brown stuff from his lungs.

There are more than a few worms in it.

He staggers upright, groaning as fire shoots up his right calf. He looks around, and nearly retches again.

He is in a graveyard. It's only the fresh-churned ground that tells him so, dark rectangles of shadow in the tangled, moonlit greenery. He counts a row of eight in arm's length of each other, nine if he includes the one –

The one that –

Jehan stumbles backward from that yawning pit, fear gripping tight at his throat, squeezing at his heart. He finds a seat on a pile of splintered planks, the remains of some coffin dug up and reused until rot had burst it at the seams. He presses a hand to his chest to steady his pounding heart, calm his gasping breaths.

His heart isn't pounding. Isn't, in fact, doing anything at all.

Jehan thumps frantically at his own chest twice, three times, as he's seen Joly do, tending men after fights at the Café Musain or the Barrière du Compat. He tries to draw breath; the effort is herculean, like pumping dry, rusted bellows. He forces out two shallow gasps – then a deep inhale – then claps his hands over his mouth and wails, in horror and in grief.

Bahorel finds him like that, as the moon dips down to catch in the spindled branches of trees. He's calmer, perhaps for seeing Jehan, though his hands betray a tremor as he touches and touches and touches the spend from the oozing hole in his gut – until Joly staggers toward him with a fistful of dirt, insists on staunching it as best he can.

"I have read _Observations on the Transfusion of Blood_ ," he says softly (as he must, barely able to draw in air for the words, though he steadies himself with a hand on Bahorel's arm), "but I am in no haste to hazard Monsieur Blundell's methods. And if there is to be infection, it will have long since set in."

Jehan looks around at their little group, three becoming four and five and six as Bossuet and Feuilly and Courfeyrac follow close on Joly's heels. He feels a lurch beneath his ribs at the sight of Courfeyrac's dear face spattered dark, the smooth column of his throat transfixed from left to right by the path of a musket ball; but the sensation vanishes as quickly as it had come. While the others cast themselves onto the grass – Feuilly without a word, Bossuet tugging at Joly until he can lay his head across his breast – Courfeyrac presses doggedly onward until he can seat himself at Jehan's right hand, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. He opens his mouth to speak and promptly doubles over, gagging, eyes squeezed shut as Jehan pounds his back in vain. They allow him a second attempt, and a third, before Bahorel claps a hand over Courfeyrac's mouth, scowling fiercely until he subsides.

Combeferre is worse.

He looks almost himself when he first limps toward them across the green. The corded velveteen of his waistcoat – too hot for June, but more proof against an errant knife, or so they'd thought – hides the sticky sheen of his blood where three bayonets had transfixed him. But when he smiles at them, smiles for them, the blood bubbles up between his lips and spills over his chin, and Jehan has no choice but to lunge toward him and wrap his arms around Combeferre's waist, dry sobs wracking his slender frame until he is deposited gently back at Courfeyrac's side.

Last to fall, last to return – Jehan startles violently as a whoop of triumph pierces the air, rending false dawn from true, and is only saved from toppling off his wood pile by Courfeyrac's arm around his waist.

" _Vive la France!_ " crows Grantaire as he pitches up the low rise they've gathered on, dragging Enjolras by the wrist, looking only a little greyer than he does after an ordinary night of carousing. " _Vive Enjolras! Vive les amis de l'abaisse!_ "

"Are you mad?" Enjolras spits, wrenching free. Then he seems to catch sight of the others: his eyes widen, his spine suddenly stiffens, and the anger falls from his face, leaving only the blankness of grief. He staggers.

"Combeferre?" His hand closes around the sleeve of his lieutenant's jacket. "How can – but I saw you – I saw all of you – " Enjolras breaks off as his gaze catches on wounds; on tattered flesh; on dark, still-spreading stains. A low, animal noise spills from between his lips as he drops to his hands and knees in the dewy green. Sudden sunlight pierces the horizon, limning his bowed head in living gold.

"Oh, my friends…forgive me."

They break like the shafts of sunlight scattering through the mist. As one, they pile onto him, Jehan crying out louder than he had even at the sight of Combeferre, Bahorel pounding his back near fit to break it, Feuilly clinging to his vest with both his slender hands. Courfeyrac squeezes between them to wrap a hand around Enjolras's neck and press their foreheads together; Enjolras returns the gesture, repeats it to Joly, scrubs the palm of his hand over Bossuet's smooth pate. He turns back toward Grantaire.

"Incapable," he says, and his voice is not warm, but it is full of wonder. "Incapable of living, incapable of _dying_ , you _son of a bitch_ – "

Grantaire tackles him to the ground. Their laughter spirals up, louder than a murder of crows on the wing.


	2. Chapter 2

Feuilly wants to go back to Paris.

Daylight has revealed familiar skylines some ten miles distant – though only for a short while, the heat quickly driving an ache into their bones that has them seeking better shelter than the tall yews that loom over some of the plots. (Every square foot that doesn't have an ancient tree or prickled briar on it is a plot, here, and likely many that do; Joly shudders delicately when Bahorel comments on how well-nourished some of the gorse bushes seem.)

They crowd into a squat mausoleum that speaks to the more illustrious days of this pauper's cemetery, before the Plague starved the city borders inward, behind old walls and older prayers. Feuilly pounds his palm flat against the stone ossuary in the center of the room as he argues his point.

"This is a gift," he cries, "a second chance! The people, too, must see how we rise!"

Combeferre shakes his head. He's acquired several of Joly's innumerable handkerchiefs and, grimacing, driven them into the holes in his chest. It keeps the blood and the air from bubbling over, at least enough for him to whisper.

"Enjolras swore," he says. "He _swore._ 'Let others rise to take our place.' We should not – I think we _must_ not – " He trails off; his lips press together until their grey turns to white, barred tighter – apparently – than the gates of Hades. They will not let the thought pass.

"Not to mention the riot we'd likely cause." Jehan's voice is stronger, stirring the remains of flowers long-ago laid on the stone. He presses a hand to his left collarbone, feeling the musket ball that burned a line through his heart and lodged beneath the bone. Courfeyrac lays a hand along the knobs of his spine, nearly jutting through the thin skin at the base of his neck. Bossuet glances at them from where he is comforting silent Joly, and then turns back.

"Grantaire?" is the only thing he says, eyes fixed on Joly's wringing hands.

Grantaire has been crouched down in one corner of the mausoleum, trailing his fingers over stony motifs of skulls and angels' wings. At Bossuet's word, he stands and turns, clapping the dust from his fingers.

" _To hell, allegiance!_ " he says, throwing his arms out wide. " _Vows, to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation._ "

"Dead Englishmen? Really?" Jehan smiles, and Courfeyrac snorts laughter into his shoulder.

"The man had a point." Grantaire twirls on a heel and thumps backward into the wall, kicking up a puff of dust that settles in his hair. "You've already given your lives for…whatever you had to give them for. Shouldn't your death be your own?"

Enjolras, perched on top of ossuary, hops down and takes two long steps across the grass-cracked granite floor. He stills toe-tip to toe-tip with Grantaire, runs a hand through his hair and sends the dust flying up like a halo.

"What did you give your life for?" he asks.

No silent tomb has ever been so silent.

**Author's Note:**

> _Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on Enjolras, replied:— "Let me sleep here,—until I die." Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:— "Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying." Grantaire replied in a grave tone:— "You will see."_
> 
>  
> 
> Hugo, Victor (2010-12-16). Les Misérables (English language) (p. 725). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.


End file.
